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The Washington Post Co. swung to a loss for the second time in less than a year, as the company's first-quarter earnings were dragged down by losses in its newspaper and magazine divisions and expenses in its education division.... The newspaper division reported an operating loss of $53.8 million caused by steep fall-offs in advertising, which are being felt across the industry. Print advertising revenue at The Post plummeted 33 percent in the first three months of this year, compared to the same period last year, and revenue at The Post's online properties -- chiefly, Washingtonpost.com -- dropped 8 percent...

Senator Cardin has introduced legislation that would allow newspapers to become non-profit organizations. A release from Senator Cardin's office says the Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as non-profits, if they choose, under 501(c)(3) status for educational purposes, similar to public broadcasting. The release states under this arrangement, newspapers would not be allowed to make political endorsements, but would be allowed to freely report on all issues, including political campaigns. The release from Senator Cardin's office says advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt and contributions to support coverage or operations could be tax deductible. WBAL News...

After the Rocky Mountain News closed on Friday, local congressman Jared Polis (a Democrat) told a gathering of netrootsers, "I have to say, that when we say, 'Who killed the Rocky Mountain News?' we are all part of that, we truly are. For better or worse, and I argue that it's mostly for better," the Denver Post reported. Woohoo.And: "The media is dead, and long live the new media, which is all of us." Who killed the newspaper? This time it was the left, according to the left. No surprise, Polis apologized on Tuesday.

A couple of years ago, when speaking to a local group, I mentioned that The Chronicle was losing money. A couple in the back of the room rudely applauded. How thrilled those two must have felt when - if - they learned of Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega's announcement Tuesday that the Hearst Corp. will implement "significant" workforce cuts. If the cuts don't pay off, then the Hearst Corp. will "offer the newspaper for sale or close it altogether." Bloggers and e-mailers are crowing. If The Chronicle is shuttered, they'll be dancing a jig. Many conservatives feel a warm glow at...

The Washington Post Co. earnings fell 77 percent in the fourth quarter of last year compared with the same period in 2007, as a large impairment charge drove down net income. The Post Co. reported fourth-quarter net income of $18.8 million ($2.01 per share) on revenue of $1.16 billion, compared with net income of $82.9 million ($8.71) on revenue of $1.13 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007. The company's newspaper division, which includes the flagship Washington Post, reported a $14.4 million operating loss for the fourth quarter and a $192.7 million operating loss for all of 2008, nearly half...

If you work in the buggy whip business and somebody invents the automobile, you just have to accept that your job has become obsolete. You need to get out of it and re-tool your factory to make gloves or coats or exotic lingerie. Nobody needs or wants what you're selling, anymore.But this analogy has no application to the crisis that newspapers are facing. The Internet has challenged the existence of newspapers, and yet Internet news and arts commentary runs and is founded on the journalism that people do at newspapers. Go to any of the popular sites and click on...

MediaNews Group Inc., which previously asked workers at its newspapers in California to take one-week unpaid leaves, is now putting employees on furlough at its papers in at least five more states. Unpaid leaves announced or agreed to Friday apply to newspapers in Texas, New Mexico, Minnesota, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In most cases, the furloughs are to be taken by the end of March. It also has frozen pensions and suspended its 401(k) fund match payments for managers and other non-union workers at the Denver daily. A MediaNews spokesman told the Associated Press on Friday that the company's employees...

Letter alleges improper payment of newsroom costs. The Denver Post violated its agreement with Rocky owner E.W. Scripps when it borrowed $13 million from their jointly owned operating agency to cover The Post's newsroom payroll, Scripps wrote in a letter to Post executives last month. "We request that this practice cease and that the Post find a way to fund its editorial payroll without resorting to this . . .," Scripps executives Rich Boehne and Mark Contreras wrote. The letter was dated Dec. 9, five days after Scripps announced it would sell the Rocky and would pursue other options, including...

SAN JOSE -- About 3,300 staffers who work at 29 daily newspapers in California run by the MediaNews Group must take an unpaid, one-week furlough in February and March as a possible alternative to layoffs, the company said Wednesday. The move, announced in an e-mail to MediaNews staffers, will affect employees at the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times and San Jose Mercury News, which are among the California papers controlled by Denver-based MediaNews. Charles Kamen, vice president of human resources for the chain, said MediaNews was following the lead of Gannett Co., which recently told 31,000 employees at 85 daily...

The McClatchy Co. reported today a 19.4 percent decline in November revenues compared with a year ago. Sacramento-based McClatchy, which owns The Bee, said advertising sales fell 22.4 percent from November 2007. Big declines in print ads were partly offset . . . Like other newspaper publishers, McClatchy is getting clobbered by the defection of business to the Internet and, increasingly, the recession.

My worry with the American Election of 2008 has nothing to do with the candidates, themselves, but really about the business of political analysis (which is my professional background). There is very little money in political analysis. So people either look to the business world to see how to make money the legitimate way (which is the path I chose), or one can corrupt one’s practice, say whatever a certain candidate wants, and become a hack. One becomes a hack either because of money or because of partisanship. Either way, good political analysts do not let emotions or money get...

In another sign that the printed word may be going the way of polar ice caps, the renowned 101-year-old De Lauer's newsstand on Broadway in Oakland is going out of business. "We have to close," said Charles De Lauer, the 91-year-old proprietor whose father started the enterprise selling papers from small wagons in 1907. "Things just got too hard." The 24-hour-a-day store that once sold newspapers and magazines from around the world will shut down at 6 a.m. Thursday, store manager Fasil Lemme said Tuesday. "This is a business that time is passing by because everybody has a computer," said...

There is a reason progress in Iraq is not receiving more attention. It isn't that Americans are "bored" or "tired" or have "moved on" or "don't care" or "have already made up their minds that the war was a colossal mistake." All of these are variations on themes articulated by certain liberals, Bush-haters, Barack Obama supporters (but I repeat myself) inside and outside the big media. The main reason progress in Iraq is not receiving more attention is that the progress is considerable and the big media are not paying attention because they don't like the new story line. They...

New York (AP) -- CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin said Thursday she was referring to her time spent at MSNBC when she said she felt pressure not to report stories critical of the Bush administration during the time leading up to the Iraq war. Yellin's initial comments, made during a discussion with Anderson Cooper on CNN Wednesday, shifted attention to the news media's performance following release of a critical assessment of the Bush administration by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. He wrote that Bush's strategy for selling the war was less than candid and honest. During her CNN appearance,...

Newspapers are dying. That's the word on the street. You may have read about it in the newspapers, because newspapers are not shy about telling people that they're dying. It's our dominant narrative. A famous media expert was recently quoted as saying that he figured that the last newspaper on earth would be printed in 2043. I'm just guessing here, but I imagine he pulled that date out of his ear or some other orifice. Well, that's journalism. Sure made for a catchy quote. Eric Alterman picked up that prediction and ran with it in a recent article in the...

The Ventura County Star said it has terminated contracts with two freelance columnists after finding evidence of plagiarism in their work. Jim Woodard, who wrote weekly columns on new businesses and real estate, used material from other sources, including the Wall Street Journal, without attribution, the Star said in a story published on April 2. The Star said it found a total of four suspected incidents of plagiarism since early November in Woodard's real estate column in the Sunday homes section. In a Feb. 20 story, the Star said it found evidence of plagiarism in two columns by David Burroughs,...

The news business is more troubled than it was a year ago, but at least the problems it faces are different from what many observers had predicted, according to the annual State of the News Media report released today by the Project for Excellence in Journalism. Mainstream media as a whole, the report found, isn't losing its audience. It just doesn't know how to get its new online customers - or anyone else who is reading what they're producing through online aggregators - to pay. The top 10 online news sites in 2007 were either big-media operations - such as...

Los Angeles (AP) -- The National Labor Relations Board wants a federal judge to order immediate reinstatement of eight newsroom employees fired by the Santa Barbara News-Press. In December, Administrative Law Judge William Kocol ordered the reinstatement with back pay after finding they were fired for union activities. The judge condemned the News-Press for flagrant misconduct . . . The News-Press is owned by Wendy McCaw's Ampersand Publishing LLC.

SAN FRANCISCO - -- A San Francisco jury awarded up to $15 million in damages today to the Bay Guardian alternative weekly newspaper, to be paid by its competitor, SF Weekly, for unfair business practices. The superior court jury agreed with Guardian Publisher Bruce Brugmann's claims that SF Weekly purposely undercut the Guardian with below-cost display ad rates, then used infusions from its Phoenix-based parent company, Village Voice Media, to stay afloat.

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The Associated Press, reporters groups and advocates for press freedoms urged the Supreme Court on Friday to reject Bush administration arguments that people held by the military in Iraq have no access to American courts. The government's view, if ratified by the court in a case that will be argued in March, would make it harder for journalists and others who are detained in the heat of battle, particularly in urban areas, to seek their freedom, the organizations said in a legal filing. The AP has been fighting the detention of photographer Bilal Hussein, who has been...